Corner speed or rotation speed?

At a driving school one student (not me!) was asking about a way to externally quantify what the best line would be for a given corner, such a computer modeling. Terry Yearwood’s reply: “Or a race driver could drive through it 3 times and know which direction to go in.” The benefit of overthinking it provides some clue that the perfect line only exist for a given condition involving a ridiculous number of variables, which change every lap.

My approach is to overthink it if & when you have the luxury to do so. Sometimes overthinking leads one to realizing what priorities to place on factors or what makes advice good or bad. As said you have to know what works for you.

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^ This

Personally, relaxing more and thinking less is something that I’ve been working on as a driver.
Especially because as a driver, my subconscious tends to run away with me. I just remind myself that I have 10 years of seat time, and that I just need to deal with the situation as it occurs.

That seemed to be better than wasting mental energy on scenarios that won’t happen. Like @Terence_Dove would say "It’s having trying to view a totally different movie while trying to drive at the same time.
"

I like much of what you’ve written here, as much as I dislike one thing you’ve written here:

the ‘BS’ you cite is learned, experienced people sharing their IP for no reason other than they’re of generous, supportive character, and love the sport.

You’re welcome to not agree - but from my perspective you’re not welcome to shitcan people’s writings. If your point is ‘don’t overthink it’ my suggestion is to say that - and only that.

That said, you’ve bought a counterpoint to this discussion that’s very valid. And Thank you for that.

Lee

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My apologies for coming across as disrespectful. Perhaps it would make more sense if I explained that I am in a way talking to myself. The person I know best, that wasted a lot of time and energy on what I term “BS”…was me, back a generation ago. I really am trying to help, by smacking you all upside the head, in a way that no one effectively did for me. Stop thinking and go race. If you do not have enough money to go race, then stop thinking, go make some more money, and go race. After you build a sufficient level of expertise…then you can turn your brain back on and start getting intellectual, because you will have built the baseline skills, and you will actually know what is worth thinking about. But have no doubt, it is wheel to wheel racing that will accelerate this process more than ANYTHING ELSE.

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Thomas:

There’s clearly passion talking here, which is great. And your advice (or admonishment) about getting out there and doing it is well made - this discussion has gone pretty deep into theory, and I recognise it’s easy to get lost in that.

I don’t know how long you’ve been reading, but the participants in this conversation (none of whom I know incidentally) seem to me to possess the foundational experience you cite as the prerequisite to discussions of this type. So I feel that we’ve all ended up on the same page.

I agree entirely that there’s no substitute for on-track combat as the way to learn. But the driver who goes into battle armed with an understanding of the fundamentals of driving will I believe extract more from the exercise than he or she who goes out there and does their best without some grounding from people who’ve done more of it. That’s been me all my life, which is why I find the discussions found here so enriching. And the sheer quantity of informed Q & A is proof of how un-obvious the fundamentals of this sport are.

Thanks for clarifying, and thanks for contributing.

Lee

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TJ:

I’m a couple of weeks behind in acknowledging your last post on this topic.

I’ve gotten a lot out of your contributions to this and I’ll be rereading what you’ve come up with here the night before I race from now on.

I’ll get back you every so often with what I’ve been able to use, and the effect it’s had on track.

Most grateful.

Lee

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This a terrific commentary. Thank you.

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Due to the lack of Racing during the Covid-19 pandemic, I found myself exploring more and more of this site. Not sure what I am looking for. Maybe just some little morsels of knowledge or Head Checks to let me know I am going in the right direction.

Thank You @Motormouse for starting this topic!!!

While I am not new to the racing environment having been around car racing my entire life, I am new to Karting. Sadly, my work schedule does not allow a lot of weekend time off and so I am lucky if I can make it to the track once a month. The gaps and duration of seat time make it difficult to progress my skill level at the rate I would like. I find it a necessity to try to analyze as much as possible between outings to maximize my efforts while at the track. It is conversations like these that I find most helpful and productive.

I am a “Why” learner. In that I mean that understanding “why” something is or has an effect is critical for me to learn it over that it exists or has an effect at all. There may be a myriad of lines through or braking points for a given corner/conditions. The reason why only a few of them are fast under specific conditions is paramount in understanding what adjustments to make to maximize them. A real world example. NTK turn 1 is a high speed, long, left high banked corner at the end of a long straight. When the track is green and grip is low, a slower entry entry speed and a later turn in is faster because it keeps you from overloading your outside rear tire and get back on the gas sooner. As the track rubbers up, higher entry speed and turning in early becomes faster as the outside rear can take more of a load before it breaks traction increasing your natural exit speed. (a.k.a. Driving Under the Rubber) Understanding why a track’s conditions affect the handling, you can know how to adjust to those changing conditions to be faster.

Like many have pointed out in this thread, discussing the concepts and theories off track can give you more insight when you are back on track and applying them. In doing so, hopefully avoiding additional errors before they even happen. I know some people just have to figure it out for themselves to fully “get it”. I prefer to have an understanding going in and then test that understanding to truly gain knowledge. Why did this work and why did that not? What changed and Why did it have the effect it did?

I look forward to finding more Gems like this in the Forums.
Thanks Guys!!!

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One way or another, you have to drive to learn. The seat time is paramount, at the end of the day. I find that sim allows me to continually progress when I can’t get in the real kart.

Obviously, time on track, wether real or virtual, needs some sort of plan otherwise it’s not all that productive. Doesn’t have to be much of a plan, but maybe it’s a simple as working on just one corner, and being instinctive for the other 10.

Our best driving comes from a place where you are not consciously driving. You earn this through repeating the task over and over till you have the confidence that you no longer need to direct the process of pressing pedals and turning the wheel. Mastery is a state of mind created from work, repetition, and analysis.

Thinking is important but driving is critical.

Nothing like the resurrection of an old thread…

In my original post, which stirred some people up, I said the following:

Just like any athletic endeavor, there are two useful activities. Anything else is unproductive.
#1: Practicing SPECIFIC skills… WORK
#2: Forgetting about all that practice and simply competing to WIN

WORK and WINNING. Those are your focuses. When you don’t WIN…why you did not will tell you what to WORK on. My comments about “stop thinking and go race” were specific to activity #2…RACING. I did not mean there was no use for thought and introspection, ever.

The time for thinking is in the EVALUATION OF YOUR RACE PERFORMANCE. This determines what you need to go back to #1 on, to practice. And when you practice (WORK) you of course need a plan as you said. Some seemed to latch onto my " stop thinking and just go race" comment…and forgotten about #1.

But here is the thing…when you are racing a lot, the “thinking” is pretty darned simple and certainly not worth a forum thread. It will be pretty darned obvious what to work on. Most of the super fast drivers (guys who went on to race formula cars and stock cars all the way to the highest levels) I ever had the privilege to be around were NOT THE DEEPEST THINKERS. I am being polite here.

As for the OPs question…speed vs rotation, again, WHO CARES. The answer can not be determined with your brain. The answer is determined on the track, and it is different in each corner. Develop the skills to drive either way, and figure it out at the race. Wasting time and energy pondering such questions is just nonsensical, in my opinion. In my experience, in a long (National length) race, the answer will change during the course of the race anyway.

I know motor sports seems like this geeky niche where we can finally win with our brains and beat the stupid but athletically talented idiot jock. Sorry but it often does not work out that way because while were busy thinking deep thought the jock was racing his ass off. What I am saying is people need to treat racing more like an ATHLETIC endeavor. That is what it is. That is why I used the basketball metaphor from the start.

Man do I wish someone had taught me this when I started racing…

Not sure why the topic bump, but 28 days later I still disagree that thinking about this stuff is a waste of time.

Literally everything I’ve accomplished in karting has come from reading, asking questions, learning, and thinking about driving and tuning. And I know lots of drivers like this who have huge credentials in the sport, that look at all their data, watch back their on-board videos, study and make notes and figure out why things happen the way they do. Learning why and how something happens often helps you make that thing happen more easily.

I’ve seen plenty of poor drivers just out there “driving their asses off” and floundering in the back because they don’t know what they doing and don’t understand how their driving technique or tuning technique is hurting them.

I’m watching the Fangio documentary on Netflix right now, and they talk about how he excelled at keeping his car alive throughout a race, even driving hard, because he was a mechanic and knew the car’s limits, knew how to nurse different parts of the car, and thought a lot about how to improve the car’s development and how to drive to it’s limits. Also, what about Senna? He was fanatical in his own self-introspection and improvement. He was constantly studying himself to go faster. Or Prost who was thinking constantly about everything; car setup, championship permutations, why the car was doing this or that… His nickname was literally “The Professor”.

For everyone of those guys, you do have a guy like Mansell or Alan Jones who just drives the nuts off the car. They probably aren’t analyzing the data as much, but I’m sure they consider things like “will this apex point carry more speed down the straight?”

There’s multiple ways to be fast. I think it’s short-sighted and narrow-minded to downplay the need to study and analyze your own deficiencies or learn why and how a kart works or what setup changes do what. “Just drive your ass off” doesn’t work for many drivers. If it did, I wouldn’t be driving coaching. I’ve told my drivers before to go out and drive the hell out of the kart and don’t think too much. They don’t go any faster.

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Anyone winning a lot does these, a lot:

Practices
Plays/Races
Thinks a lot about why they didn’t win and then circles back to the first.

The reason winners win is because muscle memory and strategy. That comes from practicing and racing and analyzing failures. Even if they make it look simple. It isn’t - go behind the scenes with any of them, and you’ll find a dedicated athlete spending all their time perfecting their craft through various means.

Obviously this discounts the mental stamina; but working on sense of self, and confidence is a different topic entirely. See Lewis Hamilton: involved with music, fashion, racing and other things to keep his mind clear and fulfilled.

I think hes articulating something that is real. Thinking too much can over overcomplicate and overwhelm.

Its a catch 22 though. To ride “thoughtlessly” requires a high degree of comfort with the track and your own driving.

There is much more to driving performance (not even counting the setup element) than perfecting specific (athletic) skills. Actually, in my experience, the smallest contributing factor to exceptional performance is physical skill.

Working on physical skills may optimize the way the driver provides inputs to “control” the kart, BUT those physical inputs are triggered by something… it’s gray, and squishy, and not the least bit athletic.

Driving is a process, whether it’s ‘thought about’ or is simply ‘done to win’. The objective of the process is to make reality match your optimal mental plan (or mental model) for getting around the track faster than everyone else.

You plan is constructed from the information you have amassed about driving in general, the specific track, your kart, the tires, atmospheric conditions, your competitors, etc. etc. I call this your knowledge matrix. It includes all sensations you should be experiencing at any particular point around the track, and all of the pre-programmed driving input triggers (aka your muscle memory for driving around the track).

So, with a plan constructed from your knowledge matrix, the driving process goes something like this:

  1. A continuous torrent of sensory information flows in.

  2. You identify and extract the relevant sensory information for your current location/condition/objectives.

  3. You translate those ‘raw’ sensations/feelings into the driving information you need (e.g. speed, level of grip, rate of rotation.)

  4. You interpret what the translated information means by comparing it to your mental model to determine if you are on target, are at the limit, need to make an adjustment (to your driving and/or your mental model, etc.)

  5. You execute the (muscle memory) driving inputs called for by the plan if any.

  6. You continuously repeat the process until the end of the session.

Therefore, ultimately everything comes back to your knowledge matrix instead of physical skills or athleticism. The more breadth and depth you have to your knowledge matrix the better driver (and setup person) you will be. This is true regardless of whether you ‘thought’ about things to improve your matrix or you just ‘did’ things to improve your matrix (like driving to win).

However, if you build the majority of your knowledge matrix through ‘action’ then most of your learning comes with a context attached (rote learning), so you need A LOT of ‘seat time’ to build a robust matrix. Conversely, if you spend some time thinking about, researching, evaluating, asking ‘what ifs’ and visualizing the information in your matrix, you will expand the interconnectedness of all of your knowledge/experience, and that can do nothing but improve your driving performance.

Getting back to the driving process; when it comes to actually being in ‘the seat’ it’s important to understand that when driving, the brain can function in a continuum, if you will, ranging from ‘serial’ mode (intellectual, ‘focused attention’, ‘thinking’) to ‘parallel’ mode (‘intuitive’, ‘aware’, ‘feeling’).

If you spend most of your time driving in serial mode, then you will be slow because the brain cannot process a lot of sensory information quickly in serial mode (this is the realm of the novice).
If you spend most of your time in parallel mode, then you may be fast (because you are driving by pattern matching ‘batches’ of sensory information at a time, which is fast/efficient), but you may also make unforced errors, or you may not be able to ‘access’ the information you need to understand what the chassis is doing (you’re just driving, not understanding anything).

Most really fast/good drivers hit a sweet spot where most of the driving process just happens on auto-pilot (parallel mode), while ‘they’ sit back and observe/catalog what everything means with a dash of serial processing (rubber’s building up in T2, I think I’ll try pulling the rears in a few mm, that guy has a weakness exiting T5, etc.).

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Without rereading this entire beast, let’s not forget how much of one’s success in racing is dependent on preparation of the equipment for every single day on track. Lack of proper preparation leads to setbacks that, simply put, detract from one’s ability to practice and/or race. Not saying it’s as important as seat time, or post-session analysis, but it’s a critical part that winning drivers and winning teams USUALLY do better than the average racer.

Also, to Evans point, we all learn in different ways and gain insights from different things.

So, the guy who wants to pound laps intuitively and intentionally wants to keep it simple can find ways to make that work for him.

But, if you wanna transcend your actual talent, there will come a point where the model you built yourself isn’t enough.

So, I think if you really want to go further, you have to look elsewhere. That is fundamentally humbling. But I think it’s a matter of keeping an open mind and listening to the stuff that resonates.

Me, I find making pals with other drivers is very helpful. We help each other all the time, even though we run each other off track, too.

This story is an example of why I believe this to be horseshit.

Here I describe a process In which I thought my way to a breakthrough as a driver. It began with deconstructing my experience on one corner and reconstructing it in a better form as I lay in bed, and then pounding out laps to implement it. I’d argue that your ‘just do it’ approach is the reason why no one else in my club was doing on that corner what I was.

Sure but I think you want to keep it simpler than I need it to be or want it to be. Piloting a kart is my Everest and I want to really understand the why of it all, too. End of the day I am doing a variation of what you describe, though. There’s practice Dom and there’s showtime Dom. Showtime Dom is chasing people, not hundredths. He thinks different. Everyone is trying to let it happen naturally, instinctively. Everyone gets out of their own way differently, however.

Isn’t that exactly what he’s doing? Working to develop those skills? Just in a way that is different than you’d consider useful? Asking the question he does is done with an intent. The intent is to improve his driving.

Anyways, it’s an interesting argument. I think that at the end of the day, every driver is looking for the same thing, those “perfect” golf swing moments, corner after corner. That’s a big ask, and ultimately if it takes prayer or whatnot, so be it.

In my opinion, there comes a point where disengaging mentally and trusting instinct no longer works. We run out of talent. Fortunately most of us will never get enough seat time to have that problem.

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